Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m42fx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T13:59:38.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acute Stress Symptoms, Dissociation, and Depression among Rescue Personnel 24 Hours after the Bet-Yehoshua Train Crash in Israel: The Effects of Gender

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Yuval Palgi ,
Menachem Ben-Ezra ,
Nir Essar ,
Hilik Sofer  and
Yeela Haber
Yuval Palgi
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Sharet Building, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Menachem Ben-Ezra*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Work, Ariel University Center of Samaria, Ariel, Israel
Nir Essar
Affiliation:
Psagot Institute, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Hilik Sofer
Affiliation:
Home Front Command, Israel Defense Forces
Yeela Haber
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Education, The Open University, Raanana, Israel
*
Department of Social Work, PO Box 3, Ariel University Center of Samaria, Ariel, 40700 Israel, E-mail: menbe@ariel.ac.il
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Introduction:

The effect of immediate exposure to traumatic events and gender differences is under-studied in the literature. Most studies focus on acute stress disorder (ASD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) phases in order to measure gender differences, and tend to neglect the immediate expo-sure to the disaster.

Hypothesis:

The main hypothesis was that female rescue personnel would exhibit higher levels of acute stress symptoms, dissociation, and depressive symptoms in the 24 hours following a traumatic event.

Methods:

Twenty-three rescue personnel participated in a search and rescue operation at the Bet-Yehoshua train crash in Israel. The rescue personnel group was divided based on gender. Each participant completed a demographic questionnaire including questions that assessed psychological symptoms and issues such as perceived threat to life, the Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R), the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES), and the Center of Epidemiologic Studies Depression questionnaire (CES-D). Statistical inferences were calculated using t-tests and chi-square tests, along with testing of covariance (MANCOVA) in order to indentify which factors are related to psychiatric symptomatology following the immediate exposure to disaster.

Results:

The results suggest that among rescue personnel, women did not differ in their levels of acute stress, dissociation, and depressive symptoms from men.

Conclusions:

These results suggest the possibility that the gender differences in reactions to traumatic events do not emerge in the acute stress reactions (ASR) phase (up to 24 hours after the event), but later on when people have time to process the trauma. Another possibility that may explain the discrepancy between this study and the common knowledge in the literature is that women rescue personnel are considered a highly selected group, which does not reflect on the general population of women. More studies are needed in order to substantiate these results.

Keywords

acute stress symptomsdomestic disastergenderpost-traumatic stress disorderrescue personnel
Type
Brief Report
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 24 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 433 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Ursano, RJ, McCarroll, JE: The nature of the traumatic stressor: Handling dead bodies. J Nerv Ment Dis 1990;178(6):396–398.Google Scholar
2.Stephens, C., Miller, I: Traumatic experiences and post-traumatic stress disor-der in the New Zealand police. Policing 1998;21(1):178–191.Google Scholar
3.Renck, B, Weisaeth, L, Skarbo, S: Stress reactions in police officers after a dis-aster rescue operation. Nord J Psychiatry 2002;56(1):7–14.Google Scholar
4.North, CS, Tivis, L, McMillen, C., Pfefferbaum, B, Spitznagel, EL, Cox, J, Nixon, S, Bunch, KP, Smith, EM: Psychiatric disorders in rescue workers after the Oklahoma City bombing. Am J Psychiatry 2002;159(5):857–859.Google Scholar
5.Fullerton, CS, Ursano, RJ, Wang, L: Acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression in disaster or rescue workers. Am J Psychiatry 2004;161(8):1370–1376.Google Scholar
6.Ben-Ezra, M, Essar, N, Saar, R: Post-traumatic reactions among rescue per-sonnel 96 hours after the Hilton Hotel bombing in Sinai: The effect of pre-vious exposure. Stress Health 2005;21(4):269–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Ben-Ezra, M, Palgi, Y, Essar, N, Sofer, H, Haber, Y: Acute stress symptoms, dissociation, and depression among rescue personnel 24 hours after the BetYehoshua train disaster: The effect of exposure to dead bodies. Prehosp Disaster Med 2008;23(5):467–471.Google Scholar
8.Dougall, AL, Herberman, HB, Dalahanty, DL, Inslicht, SS: Similarity of prior trauma exposure as a determinant of chronic stress responding to an airline disaster. J Consult Clin Psychol 2000;68(2):290–295.Google Scholar
9.Norris, FH: Epidemiology of trauma: Frequency and impact of different potentially traumatic events on different demographic groups. J Consult Clin Psychol 2002;60(3):409–418.Google Scholar
10.Breslau, N, Davis, GC, Andreski, P, Peterson, EL, Schultz, LR: Sex differences in posttraumatic stress disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1997;54(11):1044–1048.Google Scholar
11.Breslau, N, Chilcoat, HD, Kessler, RC, Peterson, EL, Lucia, VC: Vulnerability to assaultive violence: Further specification of sex differences in post-trau-matic stress disorder. Psychol Med 1999;29(4):813–821.Google Scholar
12.Breslau, N, Kessler, RC, Chilcoat, HD, Schultz, LR, Davis, CG, Andreski, P: Trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in the community: The 1996 Detroit area survey of trauma. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1998;55(7):626–632.Google Scholar
13.Fullerton, CS, Ursano, RG, Epstein, RS, Crowley, B, Vance, K, Kao, TC, Dougall, A, Baum, A: Gender differences in posttraumatic stress disorder after motor vehicle accidents. Am J Psychiatry 2001;158(9):1486–1491.Google Scholar
14.Gavranidou, M, Rosner, R: The weaker sex? Gender and post-traumatic stress disorder. Depress Anxiety 2003;17(3):130–139.Google Scholar
15.Hapke, U, Schumann, A, Rumpf, HJ, John, U, Meyer, C: Post-traumatic stress disorder: The role of trauma, pre-existing psychiatric disorders, and gender. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2006;256(5):299–306.Google Scholar
16.Ben-Ezra, M, Essar, N, Saar, R: Gender differences and acute stress reactions among rescue personnel 36-48 hours after exposure to traumatic event. Traumatology 2006;12:139–142.Google Scholar
17.Tolin, DF, Foa, EB: Sex differences in trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder: A quantitative review of 25 years of research. Psychol Bull 2006;132(6):959–992.Google Scholar
18.Essar, N, Ben-Ezra, M, Langer, S, Palgi, Y: Gender differences in response to war stress in hospital personnel: Does profession matter? Eur J Psychiatry 2008;22(2):77–83.Google Scholar
19.Shalev, AY, Peri, T, Canetti, L, Schreiber, S: Predictors of post-traumatic stress disorder in injured trauma survivors: A prospective study. Am J Psychiatry 1996;153(2):219–225.Google Scholar
20.Birmes, P, Brunet, A, Carreras, D, Ducasse, JL, Charlet, JD, Lauque, D, Sztulman, H, Schmitt, L: The predictive power of peritraumatic dissociation and acute stress symptoms for posttraumatic stress symptoms: A three-month prospective study. Am J Psychiatry 2003;160(7):1337–1339.Google Scholar
21.Weiss, D, Marmar, C: The Impact of Event Scale-Revised. In: Wilson, J, Keane, T (eds), Assessing Psychological Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. New York: Guilford, 1997, pp 168–189.Google Scholar
22.Horowitz, M, Wilner, M, Alvarez, W: Impact of Event Scale: A measure of subjective stress. Psychosom Med 1979;41(3):209–218.Google Scholar
23.Creamer, M, Bell, R, Failla, S: Psychometric properties of Impact of Event Scale – Revised. Behav Res Ther 2003;41(12):1489–1496.Google Scholar
24.Bernstein, EM, Putnam, FW: Development, reliability, and validity of a dis-sociation scale. J Nerv Ment Dis 1986;174(12);727–735.Google Scholar
25.Radloff, LS: The Center of Epidemiologic StudiesDepression scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Appl Psych Meas 1977;1(3):385–401.Google Scholar